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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258038">The Universe Flows</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherofmercury/pseuds/motherofmercury'>motherofmercury</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Cursed Child - Thorne &amp; Rowling</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Dissociation, Gen, Hopeful, albus helps ground her, albus is an awesome big brother, lily is struggling, looking after each other, mental health, more like implied mild self-harm as a form of grounding, very mild self-harm - fingernails</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-03-22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-01 05:54:55</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,824</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/23258038</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/motherofmercury/pseuds/motherofmercury</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Lily Luna struggles through her dissociation and Albus is there for her.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Albus Severus Potter &amp; Lily Luna Potter</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>4</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>14</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>The Universe Flows</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/Thealmostrhetoricalquestion/gifts">Thealmostrhetoricalquestion</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Big tw for mental health/dissociation.   </p><p>Please look after yourselves in this bizarre and messy moment we are living in and do not read this if you are feeling sensitive about mental health right now in any way.  I love you all, please stay as healthy and safe as you possibly can.  And having said that, please be kind in the comments and in general, and remember that everyone experiences these things differently.</p><p>This was sort of inspired by Thealmostrhetoricalquestion's wonderful fic 'Free Postage', but it's not actually related in any way (although big kudos for the image of a 'drenching dawn'! &lt;3)</p><p>Also, the iltalicised phrase at the very end is a T. S. Eliot quote from 'The Waste Land'.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Maybe it was the gentle, honest dawn drenching the horizon in gold and stretching chilly rose fingers across the hillside.  Maybe it was the kettle boiling quietly behind her, or the cold floor that somehow felt miles away even though she knew her bare feet were pressing against the wood.</p><p>Maybe Lily just needed a hug to ground her.  But even then she sometimes felt like she flowed out of the hugging arms and drifted away on the swirling current.  Sometimes when it happened she knew her tendrils were uncoiling in the watery thickness that hurt to breathe in, drawing away from her body and out into the flow.  The perpetual flow of the universe. </p><p>She could always feel it just beneath the surface. Or maybe it was the surface. Or was it above the surface?  One day she wouldn’t be able to hold her tendrils to her anymore and she was going to drift away into that impossibly vibrant void.</p><p>It wasn’t like she would really mind the unravelling- in fact, she knew it would be easier.  To just let go and let herself drift apart and be slowly trickled away into the universe.  Fragment by gentle fragment until there was nothing left to answer as Lily.  She didn’t want to be Lily anymore.</p><p>Lily had too many strings wrapping and binding her together.  Too many promises to keep and too many people tugging at each one. </p><p>“Lils?” Albus asked softly.  He took her hand.</p><p>Distantly, she felt the gentle pressure and knew he waited.  Slowly, slowly she had to wait too.  Slowly she felt her threads wind their ways back into her being, tying a neat little bow and parcelling her out of the drift of the current and towards her waiting brother.</p><p>At least Albus understood.  They’d talked about it once: sometimes he felt it too.  But he felt it differently to her, so it wasn’t always easy to understand.  Lily wasn’t sure when; she wasn’t sure how time could pass in such a linear fashion as it seemed to when that flow of eternity was always ghosting past her skin.  She could never keep track of all that drifted past as well as each when.</p><p>She blinked.</p><p>“Albus.” It sounded like she was underwater.  But that didn’t feel right.  It was cotton wool pulled over her ears, a hazy film before her eyes.  No.  It was a gust of air across a field, carrying her voice far away before it could reach her own ears.  Or was it a fog that muffled sound before it could carry at all?</p><p>Yes, she thought with satisfaction.  Yes.  Muffled and silent but somehow still carried away like she could be carried away if she didn’t pay enough attention.  Or was the attention paying to her?</p><p>She blinked again.  “Albus,” she said more firmly, finding her reluctant muscles and squeezing his warm hand.  Albus always had warm hands, but he was often sweaty.  She didn’t really mind because she was often sweaty too.  His palms were smoother than James’ - his were always callused from endless Quidditch - but for now Albus’ were warm and dry against Lily’s own cold and clammy.  Sometimes it was the other way around.  But warm and clammy.  Lily didn’t know how Albus managed to be warm and clammy sometimes, but he did.</p><p>Lily forced her eyes to blink once more, forced them to see Albus.  Looking and seeing weren’t the same thing.  She had to see him.  She felt the warmth of his hand seeping into her, spiralling up her arm and into her body until it became her own warmth she could hold on to.</p><p>“Lily, it’s time to go to Gran’s. When you’re ready.”</p><p>She wanted to thank him for keeping his voice soft.  She thought if he spoke any louder right then it might shatter her into tiny pieces.  Not even <em>Reparo</em> would be able to fix her, but somehow, somewhy, her words were still floating away. </p><p>Lily floundered in the flow for a moment before she could drag a quiet word out of the current.  “Okay,” she managed to whisper.  She let go of his hand and reached down for her shoes, but they were impossibly far away.  Weren’t they just there in front of her?</p><p>Albus stood up and Lily’s bed sank around her a little as his weight lifted.  She watched him kneel in front of her and untie her shoes.  He reached up to hand her one, but she wasn’t sure she could muster herself together enough to put it where it should go.  Feet.  On her feet.</p><p>She knew that.</p><p>Lily knew this wasn’t right.  She knew how this was supposed to work, but today she just couldn’t seem to make herself do something so simple and pointless.</p><p>She managed to lift her foot a little, her hands twisting together on her lap by themselves.  “Would you…?” she had to keep it to the whisper or her tendrils would become brittle.  She still might shatter.</p><p>“Of course,” he replied gently, already pulling the shoe onto Lily’s foot as carefully as he could.  Albus knew these kinds of days.  He’d had a few himself.  But Lily watched him frown at her feet, and she wondered if he knew this day was a bad one.  Could he tell?  Could he help?  Had he finally brewed a concoction that would edge the day with clarity and sharp corners and vivid colour instead of this tasteless grey haze and the drifting and the flowing and the swirling?  Albus was good at Potions, but maybe a Potion would never be enough.</p><p>Maybe maybe maybe maybe</p><p>She hugged her arms around herself and pressed her fingertips into her biceps.  Her nails were short at the moment, so they barely scratched her arms at all, but she knew that was better.  Leaving tiny crescent moons down her arms was something she tried not to do.  But sometimes she had no choice.  It was embrace the moons or succumb to the flow of the universe. </p><p>“Hey,” Albus took her hand again and helped her up from the bed.  “I’ll stay right next to you,” he was talking a bit louder than Lily would like, “we’ll get through together.”  Something adjusted itself.  Maybe the loudness of his voice would be okay.</p><p>She nodded and twitched her arms down to her sides, feeling limp and stiff and swirly all at the same time, but Albus took her hand again and gave her his warmth and she thought maybe she could do this today, maybe she could.  Maybe she should.  That Muggle therapist had told her that isolation didn’t always help, and she knew the nice lady had been right, but someway it was hard. </p><p>Lily squeezed Albus’ hand and tried to let his warmth anchor her as he led her out of her bedroom and down the stairs to where the others were making last minute preparations and pulling on coats and squeaking their shoes against the wooden floors by the door.</p><p>Their mother ran down the hall past them, throwing their coats into their arms as she flew past.  “Coats on! Let’s go.”</p><p>Lily was forced to let go of Albus’ hand to catch her coat, but her movements were sluggish and unsure.  She felt liquidified and damp.  Luckily, Albus was able to catch the coats seeing as they were twisted together anyway.</p><p>“Thanks,” Lily muttered, hearing her voice grow louder.  She felt proud that she was almost talking at a normalish volume this morning.  She would get there.</p><p>Soon they were bundled up and out the door, making their way to the Muggle car that their dad insisted they drive instead of Apparating all the time.  Lily wasn’t sure why he thought a car was better, but she was extremely grateful they wouldn’t have to Apparate right then.  The tug and the swirl would surely splinter her apart and toss her fragments and her tendrils out into the endless flow to be dragged away with the current.</p><p>*</p><p>The Burrow was always so full of noise and life, and Lily was still feeling uncertain and brittle; all her maybes coiled up tight inside her until it became hard to breathe.  But Albus was a solid warmth next to her, and Lily knew he wouldn’t leave her side if she didn’t want him to.  He couldn’t fix her, and he couldn’t make it better, but he could just be there.  He could just exist with her.  He could love her unconditionally anyway. </p><p>Lily loved Albus.  She was so full of this love for her brother that she became it.  She swirled with it, it filled her to the brim and overflowed into the current that still drifted around her.  It didn’t matter that he could be prickly and moody and spent days on end talking to no one but Scorpius.  He was her brother, and if she needed him, he was always there for her.  Lily felt as if her love flowed through her and out of her and into him, suffusing the chilly day with its molten sunlight shroud with the depth of what she felt. </p><p>That kind of love: that was true love.  It didn’t matter if it was familial or romantic or platonic or who the love was for or who they were to each other, it just mattered that they loved each other in that endless, boundless, limitless way.  Calling such a love by anything other than true love was to diminish it and box it, putting a neat little label on a tag. </p><p>Sometimes Lily wondered what it meant; to truly love someone.  But as Albus sat stoically in the current – her lighthouse through the fog – Lily knew meaning was not something that could, or should, be ascribed to a feeling so powerful.  Meaning was a limit.  Her love had no limits.  She could only express fragments of such an endless thing.  So when she was able, she let her tendrils flow away from her and into those she loved. </p><p>Into quiet Albus; and into James with his cheeky comments when she needed a lift; into her parents and their quiet acceptance of all she needed; into her Gran and Grandpa Arthur; into Teddy, and into all of her endless cousins; into her professors; and her friends, and every life she could possibly or perhaps impossibly touch, as she unfurled the blossom of her love.  Those fragments she gave willingly despite all she could not give, and in doing so, she received back a far greater abundance of fragments and a far richer papier-mâché of love than she could ever have dreamed. </p><p>Yes, Lily thought to herself, Albus’ hand still in hers.  Yes, these fragments would remain past all boundaries.  These fragments would express what she could not. <em>These fragments I have shored against my ruins</em>.  The universe would flow, and these fragments would remain long past.</p>
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